Husband of Reston homicide victim dies in Texas in apparent suicide

By James Arkin,

Jennifer Lynne Pearson was a kind and determined woman who loved to cook and garden but who saw good in a man “you shouldn’t have in your life,” her twin sister, Kathleen Jenkins, said Wednesday.

On Monday, firefighters found Pearson dead in her burned-out Reston apartment, the victim of an apparent homicide, with a knife in her body and a possible gunshot wound. Pearson, 38, was pregnant when she died.

Her husband, Timothy Connor, 31, killed himself Tuesday in Bandera County, Tex., after authorities there were asked by Fairfax County police to be on the lookout for his car.

Deputies followed Connor to his mother’s driveway in Bandera County, where he got out of the car and shot himself in the head, said Matthew King of the sheriff’s department. Connor died at a San Antonio hospital, King said.

Fairfax police did not say they think Connor killed his wife, but they did say they are no longer looking for a suspect in the case.

Connor faced multiple sex-offense and assault charges in Maryland, including one count of sexually abusing a minor. The charges involved the abuse of a single victim between Aug. 2008 and July 2012, and the trial was set for early May, said Sandra Howell, an assistant state’s attorney in Anne Arundel County.

Jenkins said that her sister met Connor in April or May and that she saw good in him despite the warning signs. That was the type of person she was, Jenkins said. “She definitely saw the good in many people that maybe didn’t deserve it,” she said.

The baby’s name was to be Aidan, and he was due in mid-June, according to a news release that the Pearson family posted for the Facebook group, which had 200 members.

Jenkins said she and Pearson were born in Fairfax County in 1975, grew up in Springfield and graduated from Robert E. Lee High School. They also graduated from Northern Virginia Community College, a semester apart.

Pearson was an administrative assistant at a pharmaceutical company, her sister said. The two remained close, and Jenkins said she often called Pearson without realizing who she was dialing.

“We had that relationship,” Jenkins said. “We always finished each other’s sentences. We knew what each other [was] thinking. We had the same exact life, except I liked seafood.”